Overactive Bladder (or “OAB”) is one of the factors that can result in urinary incontinence conditions. OAB is a chronic urological condition characterized broadly as the involuntary and uncontrollable urge felt by a subject to relieve the bladder, leading to abnormally high urinary frequency and urgency. Such conditions may occur due to frequent and spontaneous contractions of the detrusor muscle of the pelvic region of a subject.
In patients with OAB, the bladder wall exhibits localized changes including local pathological changes in the muscle (e.g. patchy denervation, increased amount of connective tissue between muscle bundles) which may contribute to abnormal function of the detrusor muscle on a macroscopic scale and could be detected and subsequently treated. Current solutions for overactive bladder treatment (e.g. systemic drugs, nerve stimulation, and Botox injections) target the abnormal function of the entire bladder and do not specifically address local and anatomical abnormalities, thereby indicating a need for devices capable of identifying and providing therapy to specific areas where local bladder abnormality originates. Further, current device based treatments like Botox injections need to be repeated as the effect wears off over time. Further, overtreatment with Botox leads to urinary retention which requires self-catheterization in order to void.
If a local origin of contractions is identified, this area may be treated. While providing a local treatment of the bladder wall, however, it is important to ensure that the mucosa (which acts as the barrier between urine and nerves/muscle) remains intact or only temporarily injured when treatment is administered. An ideal treatment affects the morphology of muscle and nerves whereas mucosa remains minimally affected by treatment modality.
Ablation is currently used in a variety of treatments to remove biological tissue via heating and may rectify some of the deficiencies of current solutions described above.
Ablation is used to treat other conditions, including, but not limited to ablating a portion of the epidermis and/or fat deposits below the skin to remove wrinkles and/or cellulite, brain tissue to treat Parkinson's disease and/or psychiatric disorders, tissue within the cornea to treat astigmatism, myopia, and hyperopia, and/or the uterine wall to treat menstruation issues and adenomysis. Ablation of tissue can also be used to remove unwanted cells like tumors and/or treat snoring. The area treated by current devices, however, is limited by the diameter of the laser; only tissue adjacent to the distalmost end of the laser fiber is heated. For treatment of OAB, as well as any other conditions tissue ablation treats, there exists a need for a device that can access and ablate a larger area of tissue without increasing the diameter of the laser fiber that penetrates the tissue. The systems and methods of the current disclosure address these deficiencies in the current art and/or other problems in the art.